EMBO Practical Course High throughput protein production and crystallization

July 5 - July 13, 2021
Marseille, France

71st ACA Annual Meeting

July 30 - August 3, 2021
Virtual

Scientists interested in molecular and materials structure with specialties in biology, chemistry, geosciences, materials science and more will converge virtually for the 71st Annual Meeting of the ACA. The theme for the 2021 meeting is “Structural Science Awakens,” which celebrates the ACA’s new tagline “The Structural Science Society.” Scientific sessions and workshops will highlight new developments in single-crystal and powder diffraction, scattering, cryo-EM, micro-electron diffraction, and advanced capabilities at national x-ray, neutron, and EM facilities.

FEBS 2021 Advanced Course

August 9 - August 14, 2021
Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic

The practical crystallization course is in fact the 9^th run of the FEBS practical courses named “Advanced methods in macromolecular crystallization“, organized since 2004. The planned course (for undergraduate, postgraduate students and postdocs with an interest in macromolecular crystallization) is rather different from the established courses in protein crystallization. The course is designed to bring over the message of the benefits of more rational approaches to macromolecular crystallization and is aimed at a healthy mixture of advanced theoretical discussions and laboratory experiments. To achieve this goal, we have invited a number of prominent experts in the field as a teachers and tutors.

The course is designed to bring over the message of the benefits of more rational approaches to macromolecular crystallization. It consists of theoretical lectures, seminars as well as practical work and demonstrations (lectures 40%, practical work 50%, discussions 10%). For crystallization experiments, typical recipes using commercial proteins will be used. In addition, students can bring their own proteins and carry out crystallization trials on these during the course.

A poster section is planned in order to encourage participants to present their own work.

The course will be held at the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia Ceske Budejovice (http://www.prf.jcu.cz/en/documents/faculty-of-science.html) in hystorical town Ceske Budejovice located in southern Czechia (https://www.budejce.cz/en/)

Subjects of the practical exercises within the course:

1. Conventional techniques and their modifications, crystallization of own proteins using commercial screening kits - using standard crystallization techniques, modification of conventional techniques, using oil, commercial screens (material: commercially available proteins + students’ own proteins)
2. Crystallization of membrane proteins in lipidic mesophases
3. Microfluidic system – crystallization in nanovolumes
4. Automates for crystallization – crystallization robot demonstration, microbatch method, \"Random\" Microseeding
5. Dynamic light scattering – introduction to the technique and demonstration
6. Protein crystallization using the GCB - GAME and other methods using capillaries, preparation a large and small diameter capillary counter diffusion for neutron diffraction
7. Observation of crystal growth / Seeding – check of crystallization set-ups, application of seeding techniques to improve crystal quality
8. The secret life of your crystallization drop
9. Trace Fluorescent Labelling for Protein Crystallization Screening
10. Evaluation of crystallization trials with the UVEX microscope
11. Practical considerations for the crystallization of protein-nucleic acid complexes
12. Crystal mounting and freezing – crystal mounting using capillaries, mounting to nylon loops and freezing in liquid nitrogen, crystal storage and transport
13. Practical crystallography – how to perform a diffraction experiment?
14. Single-particle cryo-EM
15. Intracellular protein crystallization
16. Crystals for XFEL

IUCr Satellite workshop Methods of Structural Biology

August 9 - August 13, 2021
Remote participation

We invite you to a joint workshop on structural biology methods and computational analysis of crystallographic and Cryo-EM data

in connection with the XXV Congress and General Assembly of IUCr in Prague this August.

Our workshop has two parts

1. 9-10 August, CCP4/CCP-EM online workshop (computational) - remote participation only
2. 12-13 August, CMS workshop (individual methods with hands on sessions at instruments) - on site only (if the situation allows) in the Centre of Molecular Structure, IBT, Biocev, Vestec near Prague

We are collecting preliminary registrations and the final decisions will be made at the end of June.

Workshop web page

https://www.ibt.cas.cz/en/core-facilities/centre-of-molecular-structure/courses/2021-iucr-cms-satellite-workshop/

Preliminary registration

https://forms.biocev.org/index.php/891685?newtest=Y&lang=en

25th IUCr Congress

August 14 - August 21, 2021
Prague, Czech Republic

Modern crystallography is an interdisciplinary subject covering structural biology, pharmacy and chemistry to physics and materials science. It includes the study of protein structures and also the crystals structures and microstructures of minerals, new functional materials, nanoparticles, bulk materials, and thin films. It is interested also in the relationship between the structure and function of materials. Important related topics is development of instrumental techniques for structural characterization of materials including large facilities XFELs, synchrotrons and neutron sources but also continuous improvement of laboratory equipments, development of optics, better and faster detectors.

The core methods of crystallography are X-ray and neutron scattering. However, mainly in last decade, it includes electron diffraction and microscopy, NMR and different spectroscopies. This development also allows investigation of structural changes under extreme conditions such as high and low temperatures, high pressures, time-resolved studies, different in-situ experiments in external fields (magnetic, electric), chemical reactions.

The scope of the congress comprises all this. Moreover, this is the 25th anniversary congress and completes one era of these congresses that started in 1948.

The congress programme is prepared by the International Programme Committee representing mainly the IUCr commissions that are also the main focus of the congress: Aperiodic Crystals, Biological Macromolecules, Quantum Crystallography, Crystal Growth and Characterization of Materials, Crystallographic Computing, Crystallographic Nomenclature, Crystallographic Teaching, Crystallography in Art and Cultural Heritage, Crystallography of Materials, Electron Crystallography, High Pressure, Inorganic and Mineral Structures, Magnetic Structures, Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography, Neutron Scattering, NMR Crystallography and Related Methods, Powder Diffraction, Small-Angle Scattering, Structural Chemistry, Synchrotron and XFEL Radiation, XAFS.

Membrane Protein Expression, Purification and Characterization (mPEPC2)

September 7 - September 14, 2021
Hamburg, Germany

Integral membrane proteins (IMPs) are encoded by 20-30% of all open reading frames and provide key functions in the cell. Due to their hydrophobic nature, they are more difficult to study and structural information is lagging far behind their soluble counterparts. This EMBO Practical Course trains PhD students and early career postdocs with the latest developments in membrane protein production, characterization and structure determination methods. Modern protein expression techniques in various hosts will be presented and students will get acquainted with state-of-the-art approaches for studying structural and dynamic aspects of membrane proteins. An attitude to combine protein purification and characterization will be taught to impress the necessity on the students that proteins have to be conditioned with care to achieve structural information. The presence of a crystallization and cryo-EM facility as well as beamlines for SAXS and macromolecular crystallography at the venue will be employed to perform integrated structural biology experiments. The course has an emphasis on practicals in small groups, and a \"Meet the scientist\" session at the beginning of the course will ensure a close interaction between students and tutors. The aim is to inspire the students to apply the newly acquired knowledge and to maintain interactions among themselves and the tutors afterwards.

Accepted students are encouraged to bring their own samples (frozen state) for quality control, crystallization and negative stain EM. Precise shipment conditions and information will be provided to the selected applicants.

South American Macromolecular Crystallography School

September 20 - October 1, 2021
Institut Pasteur de Montevideo - Uruguay

We are pleased to announce the 8th South American Macromolecular Crystallography School 2021 \"Structural Biology to enhance high impact research in health and disease” to be held from Sep 20 to Oct 1, 2021 Please find the application form and further information at http://pasteur.uy/novedades/mx2021/

The application deadline is June 30, 2021. For further inquiries contact mx2021@pasteur.edu.uy

Main Topics:

Data collection (remotely @ Diamond synchrotron); · data processing; · phasing and structure determination; · model refinement and validation.

25 participants will be selected, prioritizing advanced PhD students, postdocs and young researchers. No registration fee, please look in the www site for details on application procedures.

Participants will have the opportunity to collect data from their own crystals at Diamond Light Source synchrotron via remote access, with the assistance of Diamond staff.

The workshop will be virtual considering the pandemics constraints. It will combine excellent lectures with hands-on problem-solving sessions. Tutorials of state-of-the-art software will include XDS, Dials, Phaser, ShelX, Coot, Refmac, Buster-TNT, PISA, among others.

Since the workshop is virtual additional participants may elect to attend lectures only. If you wish to do this please complete the registration form and indicate that this is your choice.

Invited speakers and tutors :

Rafael Junqueira Borges (Instituto de Biociências UNESP, Botucatu, Brazil) • Kevin Cowtan (University of York, UK) • Eleanor Dodson (University of York, UK) • Paul Emsley (Laboratory of Molecular Biology MRC, Cambridge, UK) • Elspeth Garman (University of Oxford, UK) • Beatriz Guimarāes (Instituto Carlos Chagas Fiocruz, Curitiba, Brazil) • Marin van Heel (Lab. Nacional de Nanotecnologia CNPEM, Campinas, Brazil) • Ronan Keegan (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab – CCP4, Didcot, UK) • Eugene Krissinel (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab – CCP4, Didcot, UK) • Andrey Lebedev (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab – CCP4, Didcot, UK) • Natalia Lisa (Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular, Rosario, Argentina) • Joāo Muniz (Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Brazil) • Garib Murshudov (Laboratory of Molecular Biology MRC, Cambridge, UK) • James Parkhurst (Diamond Light Source, Didcot, UK) • Randy Read (University of Cambridge, UK) • Silvia Russi (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, USA) • Nukri Sanishvili (Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, USA) • Isabel Usón (Instituto de Biología Molecular de Barcelona, Spain) • Clemens Vonrhein (Global Phasing Ltd, Cambridge, UK)

Organizers:

Nicole Larrieux, Clinical Biochemist. Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Uruguay Kyle Stevenson, DPhil. CCP4, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom Alejandro Buschiazzo, PhD. Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Uruguay

This Workshop is supported by the Collaborative Computational Project Nº4 (CCP4, UK) & Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK); the Centro de Biologia Estructural del Mercosur (CeBEM); and the Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnologia para el Desarrollo (CYTED) through de MICROBES consortium.

Looking forward to seeing you at the Workshop!

2nd French Integrative Structural Biology Congress

November 29 - December 3, 2021
Paris-Saclay, France

The Integrative Structural Biology Meeting is organized by the Association Française de Cristallographie and the Société Française de Biophysique together. BSI 2021 is the second edition of the meeting. Our goal is to strengthen the links between the structural biology and biophysical communities.

The 2nd French Integrative Structural Biology Congress is to be held in the Paris-Saclay campus from the 29th of November to the 3rd of December 2021.

The meeting will bring together French and international scientists working in the fields of Structural Biology and Biophysics in an inspiring environment of scientific exchange and discussion. This will be a unique opportunity to bring together for the second time in France scientists from multidisciplinary communities in X-ray crystallography, liquid- and solid-state NMR, electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, biophysics, and computational methods. We expect 200 scientists (students, engineers, as well as private and academic researchers).

72nd ACA Annual Meeting

July 29 - August 3, 2022
Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront, 1401 SW Naito Parkway, Portland, Oregon 97201 USA

The ACA Meeting is an annual event providing scientists from a wide variety of backgrounds the opportunity to exchange cutting edge ideas and techniques in multiple areas of research. Each meeting highlights various aspects of crystallography and demonstrates their significance to the greater scientific community. Vendors display the latest technology at the exhibit show.  Save the dates and join us!